Ottawa Indians

The Ottawa Indians originally lived along the Ottawa River in eastern
Ontario and western Quebec at the time when European settles first arrived in the early
1600s. They moved into northern Ohio around 1740. They were part of the
Algonquian Indians and are thus related to the Delaware Indians, the
Miami Indians, and the Shawnee Indians. They were enemies of the
Iroquois Indians and never really trusted the Wyandotte Indians because
they were related to the Iroquois.

Ottawa comes from the term commonly used by several Native American peoples meaning 'to trade',
`to buy and sell.'
and applied to the Ottawa because in early traditional times they were noted among their neighbors
as intertribal traders and barterers, dealing chiefly in cornmeal, sunflower oil, furs and skins,
rugs or mats, tobacco, and medicinal roots and herbs.

In 1615 Samel de Champlain describes meeting 300 men of a tribe which he said that their arms consisted
only of bow and arrow, a buckler of boiled leather, and the club. They wore no breechclout,
and their bodies were extensively tattooed. Their faces were
painted in diverse colors, their noses pierced, and their ears bordered with trinkets—pretty much
what you might expect walking down the street of any large metropolitan city today.

During the American Revolution, the Ottawas fought for the British against the Americans. When the
British surrendered to the Americans, the English turned their backs on their Indian allies. The
Ottawas continued to fight the Americans.

Ottawa is the county seat of Putnam County, Ohio. Residents named the town, which was founded in
1833, in honor of the Ottawa Indians, who once had a village at the site of modern-day Ottawa.

Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer and navigator who mapped much of northeastern North America
and started a settlement in Quebec. Champlain also discovered the lake named for him (Lake Champlain,
on the border of northern New York state and Vermont, named in 1609) and was important in establishing
and administering the French colonies in the New World.